Friday, September 14, 2012

iPads For Every High School Student???

The rumors are true, yes, we will be providing every student with a school-issue iPad! We hope to have the iPads in our student's hands sometime around Thanksgiving Break.

We've been working on a 1:1 iPad initiative for over a year. After a lot of discussions and planning we have found a way to fund this venture through our current technology budget and some cost savings on textbook purchases, copier toner, and paper to name a few. Teachers have already been preparing digital curriculums the past couple of years since we introduced overhead projectors in every classroom along with more emphasis this fall. This August, we issued school email accounts for every student and the encouraged use of working on 'the cloud' to submit papers and homework in a more paperless setting. We still have a lot of training planned for staff, students, and parents before we are ready to distribute the iPads when they arrive.

Teaching with technology is both a district and state goal for education. Our expectations are to slowly explore content uses for students this semester and then be ready to incorporate the iPads more fully next semester. I would like to emphasize that iPads are simply a tool used to deliver and communicate our curriculum, our goal is to teach content standards. The iPad is simply a more interactive tool to accomplish this goal.

It doesn't take long to research the many benefits of blending technology (or specifically iPads) into the classrooms. We looked at a variety of tools for use including laptops and other tablet devices, we chose the iPad product due to lower cost and the more educational applications available that Apple has been releasing.

I'll provide more details for students at our assembly this afternoon. Parents and students will be asked to attend a training before the deployment of these devices at a date to be determined. Thank you all for your support in our pursuit to accomplish this endeavor!